Conference hydra::amiga_v1

On the BIX conference for asdg/color.products, others have requested a
mouse-driven version of cropping. I think it's going to go into the
next update (which is supposed to ship to registered owners in March).

I've played with the ARexx commands (i've got a script for "compositing"
multiple small images into one larger one). I'm glad the ARexx interface
is there - it's nice to be able to do such things. It provides all the
power you could want, but is very non-standard. Result strings come back
in ADPRO_RESULT instead of RESULT; macros started from ADPRO don't address
it by default; and there's apparently no asynch interface (hmm - maybe
using the AREXX port....).

	<mike

>On the BIX conference for asdg/color.products, others have requested a
>mouse-driven version of cropping. I think it's going to go into the
>next update (which is supposed to ship to registered owners in March).
 That would really make it a class act product. I thought that it odd 
that the cropping is handled the way it is. 
>I've played with the ARexx commands (i've got a script for "compositing"
>multiple small images into one larger one).
	How does the script work? I asume that you need to have all the pics
presized,with a matching pallette ect.
	I have been converting files to PCX,Gif format to display here at
work on my decstation 325. It seemd they always look darker when displayed
here, but that was actually because they are displayed that way,and the
display profram allows you to modify brightness,a dnother features.
As soon as I get through the learning curves I expect great results.
							bill

>> >I've played with the ARexx commands (i've got a script for "compositing"
>> >multiple small images into one larger one).
>>	How does the script work? I asume that you need to have all the pics
>> presized,with a matching pallette ect.

ADPro works in 24 bit color, so the pallette matching isn't a problem (free
memory is, though!). Just load all the images, then let ADPro compute a
display pallete.

The script does the presizing using ADPro. It uses the ADPro file requester
to get file names to composite, and asks you where it one should be put
in the grid (row & column number by whole pictures). After you cancel a
file request, it figures out how big the grid is and how many pixels each
grid element is. Finally, it composites each picture into the right place
in the grid, doing a little bit of calculation to place to-small pictures
"correctly" inside their grid element.

I thought about having it resize the to-small pictures, but decided it wasn't
worth it. it would still only work on pictures near the same size, and could
leave the aspect ratio broken. Shrinking to-large pictures works for pretty
much any size, but still has the aspect ratio problem.

The script turned up to problems with ADPro's Rexx interface. First, there's
no way to let the user do things in ADPro, then signal you to continue.
Because of this, I wound up displaying a picture and just doing a delay long
enough to figure out what the picture was before going on. Second, the
"rectangle" operator (which I use to build a blank image to composite things
on) doesn't have a hook to let the _user_ twiddle things. So backgrounds are
always black.

	<mike

    Yesterday when I got home  there was a package from ASDG waiting for
    me. It contained a patch disk, and manual addendum  for updating to
    1.0.3 . Sadly to say, the update does not have a better way to crop
    the screen. It has some nice addittions though.
    	* A new loader which gives direct control over Progressive
    	  Peripherals FrameGrabber
    	* A new loader providing input capability of images in 
    	  MacPaint format.
    	* A new loader providing input capability of images in 
    	  HAM-E format.
    	* A new saver which gives direct control over the Impulse
    	  Firecracker 24 display board.
    	* A new operator that gives you a selectable BLUR function.
    	* A new operator which gives you a selectable NOISE FILTER.
    	* A new operator which gives you a VIDEO TILING capability.
    	* A rewritten color to gray operator which gives you more 
    	  flexability.
    	* A new ARexx command which allows you to ask the 
    	 user to select a new directory.
    	* several new command line options which allow you to 
    	control the use of the ADProDefaults file.
    
    It was nice to come home to an unexpected update. ASDG has continued
    to maintain excellent customer support. I ran the install for the patch
    an took some time to make sure they worked ok, but not enough time to
    give a review of the added functions. On the HAM-E support it is
    important to note it is a loader function only. It strips away the
    Cookie from the HAM-E file. I don't have any HAM-E so I could not try
    it out. 
    							bill
    

    Has anyone used ADPRO to convert IFF to Postscript and printed out on
    an LPS20?  I seem to recall when I first got ADPRO a few weeks ago that
    I converted a 800x600 file and printed it out as a test with no
    problem.  Now I only get the header sheet and end of job sheet and
    nothing in between.  It prints on the LN03R fine, but takes forever.
    
    I am saving from ADPRO directly to a 720KB disk using CROSS DOS. 
    Putting that disk in my Pathworks PC and printing out on the LPS20.
    (Actually, I copy A:file to M:file and use a VAX print que to print it
    out).  
    
    Anybody else had success with the LPS20?  Any ideas?
    
    Terry
    

I've done a number of files from ADPro -> Postscript -> lps20 with no
problems, including the times I told ADPro to save color instead of
greyscale.

Make sure you're using the non-encapsulate save option. If you're using PS,
give EPS a try. Also make sure you're not doing something in the transfer
process that would introduce extraneous characters into the postscript
(mail systems are good at line wrapping postscript, which breaks it quite
nicely).

The behavior (head/trailer and nothing else) sounds like a broken postscript
file. If you're using Ultrix, I'd recommend "lpr -Mkeep" to get the
postscript error message mailed to you. I can't find a VMS equivalent to
this.

Irregardless of what Adobe and others tell you, there are differences
between the postscript on various printers, and some things that work fine on
an lps20 might break on an lps40, and vice versa.

	<mike

    For VMS, try /PARAM=MESSAGES=PRINT to capture error messages and print
    them on the trailer page.

    Anyone know when a DCTV Display loader will be available?
    
    Also, anyone have any neat convolve matrices they'd like to share?
    
    -=mikie=-